Picture Post No. 2: The Blue Dot

There's a famous image, taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts, of the Earth as a swirling, 'blue marble' hovering over the desolate, grey soil of the Moon. The image is reputed to have created a new consciousness of humankind's fragility and transience - and inspired a new determination to look after our planet... Well, that didn't last long!

When I first saw the 'Blue Marble', to be honest, it didn't have any kind of effect on me. After all, I was familiar with the idea of planets in space, from numerous paintings and drawings - but this image just accidentally caught the Earth in the background.

Somehow, this time, I caught a hint of who those first space images might have changed perceptions back on Earth.

October 25th 2015

Unfortunately, the original comments, from July 2015, on this post are unable to be displayed - for 'technical reasons'.

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Philosophical Investigations is an open access, on-line, scholarly, collaborative knowledge work. It combines images, cartoons, poetry, and of course text to examine philosophy in the widest possible sense.

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